The Glass Room

by Simon Mawer

  The Glass Room remained indifferent, of course. Plain, balanced, perfect; and indifferent. Architecture should have no politics, Rainer von Abt said. A building just is. Below it, lapping up to the foot of the garden, were the rough tides of those political years, while the Landauer House stood beached on the shore above the tidemark like a relic of a more perfect golden age. That summer there were graffiti on the walls in Marienbad, where the Landauers went for their usual holiday. SdP was the slogan, painted in red letters that dripped blood. Elsewhere there were swastikas, as black as death. Despite complaints, the graffiti remained for days before workmen came and painted them out. That summer Viktor and Liesel went to the cinema and saw in the newsreel a man in pale grey ranting at ten thousand torch-bearing soldiers. Perhaps it was that year, the autumn of that year, that Viktor began, without ever telling his wife, to transfer funds from his bank accounts in both Prague and Vienna into a new account in Switzerland.

  Love

  She is waiting for him in the shadow of the big wheel, a small, bright figure in her cheap clothes, a flame among the grey coals of the crowd. She laughs as she kisses him, a laugh of something close to happiness. ‘You got my note?’ he asks.

  ‘Of course I did. That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘What shall we do?’

  ‘Let’s go for a ride.’ She takes his hand and drags him protesting towards the queue. ‘Do you remember the first time?’

  Of course he remembers the first time. The Riesenrad is like a talisman for him. Whenever he sees its arc above the houses of the city, he thinks of her. The wheel of fate. The metaphor is obvious.

  ‘You were so stern, I thought that I had done something wrong.’

  ‘It is me that is doing something wrong.’

  ‘And do you regret it?’

  ‘No. No, I don’t.’

  They edge towards the front of the queue. This time their cabin is crowded. A fat Hausfrau and her four children push and shove around them, the children quarrelling, the woman apologising for their bad behaviour. Kata looks at Viktor and makes a little grimace, but it gives them an excuse to stand close together, Kata at the window looking out, Viktor pressed behind her. The cabin rises into the air, with the children moving from one side to the other and making it swing. ‘Keep still, you little buggers!’ the woman cries, and apologises again. ‘Kids these days,’ she says. Two hundred feet below the crowds in the Haupt-Allee are like lice crawling across the back of a dusty animal. Kata points out the Danube, and in the distance, the hills behind Pressburg, where she lived before coming to Vienna. He bends to kiss her neck where there are wisps of hair and her strange, warm, mammal smell. The children giggle and point at this public display of affection. ‘She your sweetheart, Mister?’ one of them asks. It must be a dare. The mother clips him round the ear – ‘Don’t you be cheeky!’ – while his siblings watch with bated breath for any reaction from their victim.

  ‘Yes,’ Viktor answers them, ‘she’s my sweetheart. I love her very much.’

  ‘Love!’ the children exclaim as though it were a shocking word. Their mother tries to hush them. ‘Lovey, love!’ they say, giggling with delight.

  After the ride they stroll through the Prater and drink beer at one of the cafés. Kata seems distracted. She watches the antics of the sparrows that skip around their feet, pecking at the crumbs she throws for them. One bird is bold enough to come onto the table and watch the two of them with curious, bright eyes, almost as though it knows what is going on. ‘What you said, to that kid …’

  ‘On the wheel? It was a joke.’

  ‘Of course it was a joke.’ She looks away across the expanse of grass towards the Riesenrad turning slowly in the evening air. ‘But it was a cruel one.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. It doesn’t mean that I don’t feel for you.’

  ‘Feel for me? That’s a consolation.’ She taps her finger on the table and the sparrow hops nearer, expecting food. ‘You know, I think about you often, Viktor. It’s stupid of me, but I do. I think about you and wonder what your life is like, your wife and your children, that kind of thing.’ She gives a little shrug, still watching the sparrows, reluctant to meet his eyes. When she looks up there is that glacial light in her blue eyes. ‘I don’t even know your real name, do you realise that? I just wait for you to send me a letter or give me a call. Look.’ She opens her handbag and takes out a fold of paper. It is the note he wrote to her three days before, poste restante at the Nordbahnhof post office, a note like many others – just the date and the scribbled lines: My darling, I will be in the city on the 23rd. Can we meet? At the big wheel at 4.30? Yours ever, V.

  ‘You see?’

  ‘See what?’ There is something inside him that isn’t anger but is much like anger. It is focused on this woman in front of him, with her pretty little face and her bitten fingernails and her liberal body. ‘What are you trying to make me see, Kata?’

  ‘The words you write. I keep them because I know I’ll never hear you say them.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ He reaches out and takes her hand and draws it towards him. ‘Do you want me to say “darling”? Is that it?’ He kisses her fingertips, which seem childish and artless but are, in fact, skilful and inventive. ‘My darling Kata. There you are, I’ve said it.’

  Petulantly she pulled away. ‘Don’t make fun of me. I don’t mean that. I mean, “Yours ever”.’

  ‘Yours ever?’ He laughs. ‘It’s just an expression you use at the end of a letter. Immer der Ihrige. Just an expression.’ But she doesn’t share the joke. There is something disconsolate about the cast of her head and the way she holds herself. Her expression is bleak with unhappiness. And suddenly he understands what his own emotion is, this thing that seems something like anger, an emotion that takes command of his mind and his body and makes both of them obey orders that appear not to be his own. ‘Come,’ he says, getting up from his seat and taking her hand. ‘You’re going to ruin things. We’re going to say things we shouldn’t.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘I said we shouldn’t say them. Don’t you see? There are always things that couples mustn’t say.’

  ‘Are we a couple? Or just a convenience?’

  He puts his arm round her, hoping to break the mood and put the meeting back on its even keel. ‘Where shall we go?’ he asks as he leads her away through the strolling people, dodging the bicycles and the children and the dogs, towards the entrance of the park. What would happen if someone recognised them, someone from Město, or from the Landauer office in Vienna? But the people passing by are anonymous and indifferent, barely glancing at the two of them, unaware of the small, intense argument that has sown seeds of disruption and disquiet.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asks.

  ‘Where do you want to go?’

  ‘What about my place? It’s not far. What about going there?’ She shrugs nervously at his silence, as though the question should never have been broached. ‘It’s just a couple of rooms, but it’s all right. Cosy.’

  ‘Fine. That sounds fine.’ But it is the first time she has ever made the suggestion.

  Her apartment is in a building only a short walk away, in a side street off the Praterstrasse. They must have passed the place before but she never mentioned it. Although it is obvious that she lives somewhere round here, the two worlds, her own and their shared one, have never intersected before. Jews live in this quarter, plying their trade in the narrow streets and huddling together in the cramped tenements. Next door to her block is a kasher butcher’s shop with a menorah painted on the window and a mezuzah nailed to the doorpost. An old man with a skull cap and ringlets watches from the doorway as they pass by. Perhaps he is the shochet, the man who knows how to hone his knife so that the blade is perfect, the cut is perfect, the draining of blood perfect.

  Kata unlocks a street door and leads the way in, out of the light and the expressionless eyes of strangers. There is the smell of boiled cabbage and damp in the
stairwell. She climbs the stairs towards the attic, chatting all the time, a thin, nervous chatter: Frau So-and-So lives there, and an old couple who used to work at the theatre lived over there; no one cleans the stairs, although they are meant to take it in turns, and so she does the job herself when she can find the time. Once a fortnight or the place would become unbearable. The muck they leave for someone else to clear up! So he mustn’t find it too filthy.

  ‘It’s fine,’ he assures her. ‘It’s fine.’

  At the top of the main staircase she knocks on one of the doors and calls out, ‘It’s me. I’m back,’ through the wood. And they go on, up narrower stairs to the very summit where there is a small landing with a window that looks out onto the roofs, and a narrow doorway that opens into her room. Inside, beneath a ceiling that slopes with the pitch of the roof, is a tight, organised personal world, replete with the mysterious signs of Kata’s presence – her clothes, her trinkets and ornaments, all the artefacts of her own, hidden life. There is a bed along one wall and a sofa and armchair on either side of a gas fire, cheap ready-made furniture with velour upholstery and antimacassars on which clients, presumably, might rest their oiled heads. Dormer windows give a view across the Prater towards the river; and there is the Riesenrad, picked out in electric lights now, like a great Catherine wheel, the wheel of fate rotating in the darkening sky.

  She stands close to him, sharing the view. ‘See what I have to look at? I always think of meeting you there. No one had ever asked me to do something like that.’

  ‘I was nervous. I needed time to think about what I was doing.’

  She slips her hand in his. The gesture seems natural, devoid of the artifice that there was when they first knew each other. ‘You’re never nervous.’

  ‘I was then.’

  ‘And now? What do you feel now?’

  He turns from the view and looks at her, taking both her hands in his. He feels a need to explain, although explanation isn’t clear even to himself. This simple commercial undertaking has metamorphosed into something else, mere physical need becoming the underpinning of what is now a kind of fulfilment.

  ‘Content. I feel content.’

  She’s about to say something – what would it be? – but before she can utter any words the door opens. They turn. Viktor expects some intrusion from the adult world but there is only a child standing in the open doorway, a little girl about six years old – five or six, younger than Ottilie for sure: a small, solemn creature in a plain nightdress and with her hair done in pigtails.

  Kata slips from his grasp. ‘What the devil are you doing up? You know you must stay in your room.’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘Well, you just go back and try.’

  The girl’s eyes are fixed on Viktor. ‘Are you one of Mutti’s friends?’ she asks.

  He doesn’t know how to answer. Interrogated by a child, he is speechless.

  Kata picks the girl up. ‘Of course he is. An old friend. This is Herr Viktor. And’ – she turns towards Viktor to show her daughter – ‘this is Marika. Now you, young lady, must go back to bed.’

  The girl clings to her mother, her pale legs wrapped round Kata’s waist, her eyes watching. There is something simian about her, something quick and canny. ‘If he’s an old friend why haven’t I seen him before?’

  ‘You haven’t met all of Mutti’s friends. Why should you? Now you come along with me.’ The door closes behind the two of them and the incident, the unexpected visitation is over.

  Alone, Viktor wanders indecisively round the room, looking at the bakelite clock on the mantelshelf and the pictures on the wall, fashion plates from magazines showing women in cloche hats and narrow dresses. In one of the photos there is a car in the background – a Landauer. On the chest of drawers against one wall is a tray with Kata’s things in it – a string of small, uneven pearls, some lipsticks, an enamel box with a vaguely oriental design, a scattering of hair grips. He picks through these items as though he might find something of value. A glass bottle of strange, organic shape holds some inadequate fraction of her scent. What else does he not know about Kata? What else is about to walk through the door into his life?

  ‘You never told me you had a daughter,’ he says accusingly when she returns.

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Of course it matters.’

  ‘That’s why I never told you.’ She stands in front of him with that childish defiance. ‘I wanted to say, but then I was frightened that it might scare you off.’

  ‘So why now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She shrugs. ‘I thought, let him see. Why should I hide? Let him see.’

  ‘But you bring other people here.’

  ‘A few, sometimes. They don’t mind, do they? They like to give her sweets and things, pretend they’re in a family, really. Uncle Hans and Uncle Josef, that kind of thing. It’s nice for her.’

  ‘How can you leave her all alone?’

  ‘I don’t leave her alone, do I? There’s the woman downstairs. She keeps an eye on her when I’m out.’

  ‘Who’s her father?’

  ‘What the hell has that got to do with you?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’ He casts round for what to say, sitting disconsolately on the bed, with his hands hanging between his legs and his head down. ‘Look, maybe I’d better go.’

  ‘Then go if you want to.’ She turns away looking for a distraction. There’s a sink in the corner and a gas ring. She puts some water on to boil. ‘I’d appreciate something for taking up my time, but that’s up to you.’

  They have never spoken like this, never had an argument of any kind. What he wanted, she did for him. And when they talked it was in evasive generalities, about life, about their likes and dislikes, about her absurd dreams. Never about the reality of his life, never about hers.

  ‘I don’t want to,’ he says. ‘I want to stay with you.’

  She doesn’t look round. ‘Right. I’ll just wash a bit. The bathroom’s on the floor below, I’m afraid. There’s just this basin if you want it.’ She takes off her dress and leans over the basin, and he almost laughs at the emotion he feels at the sight of her, her breasts hanging loose inside her slip, the satin clinging to her buttocks, and the compulsion he has to touch her. ‘I’ll have to wash my shirt,’ he tells her. ‘Can we do that, and dry it overnight?’

  ‘I’ll see to it. We’ll hang it in front of the fire.’

  He sits in his vest and watches her as she does the small domestic task. There is something touching about the scene, some quality of light that reminds him of a painting by a French artist that Liesel admires. Not Degas. Someone more modern, but not unlike. Bonnard. None of the pure lines that von Abt applauds, that Viktor himself admires, but instead the broken, refracted shapes of light and colour, the shameless curves of a woman unobserved. But Kata isn’t unobserved. She is watched by him closely, for every minute movement and gesture, as though he is a connoisseur and she a work of art.

  She glances round and smiles, and in that moment he considers telling her what he is thinking. It would be ridiculous of course, but he considers it just the same: I could love you. The careful conditional tense, even in his thoughts.

  When she has finished at the basin she fills a tin bidet with water and squats to wash. As she towels herself dry he takes off his trousers and, blatantly erect, shares her water, washing himself in the cloudy suds that have cleaned her. She laughs at the sight. ‘Our dirt together,’ she says, touching his shoulder. He reaches up and pulls her head down towards him and kisses her ear, the little, tight curl. Things have changed. The moment of altercation has passed and they have come through, strangely, into a different world. The sex they have that evening is quiet and particular, close to lovemaking, a thoughtful ritual in which they talk together, and smile, watching each other with careful eyes, and kiss, mouth on mouth, which seems an intimacy greater than the other, shameless things they do. The gas fire sounds in the background like a co
ntinuous intake of breath and Viktor experiences a strange elation, the sensation of completeness, of being truly alive. ‘I could love you,’ he murmurs in her ear.